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12 The Missing Self in Hacking’s Looping Effects Şerife Tekin A significant philosophical discourse has been dedicated to the ontological status of mental disorders. (See, for example, Hacking 1986, 1995a,b, 2007a,b; Cooper 2004a,b, 2007; Samuels 2009; Graham 2010; Zachar 2001.) The primary focus has been on whether mental disorders are natural kinds—that is, whether they are similar to the kinds found in the nonhuman natural world, such as gold.1 Ian Hacking argues that mental disorders are human kinds, differing from natural kinds insofar as they are subject to the looping effects of scientific classifications.2 The precise reason why mental disorders cannot be natural kinds is that being classified as having a mental disorder can bring on changes in the self-concept and the behavior of individuals so classified. Such changes, in turn, can lead to revisions in the initial descriptions of mental disorders. Members of natural kinds, however, are not subject to such looping effects. The phenomenon of looping effects is considered a compelling challenge to the claim that mental disorders are natural kinds, and thus is discussed widely by both Hacking’s followers and his critics. It is also widely resorted to by social scientists, especially those in critical disabilities studies, sociology, and anthropology. (See, e.g., Carlson 2010; Stets and Burke 2003.) Yet the inherent complexity of the phenomenon has not been addressed, even by Hacking himself. In particular, the causal trajectory in which looping effects are generated and the way in which the subject responds to being classified remain unclear. Nor it is clearly understood how looping effects come about in the context of psychopathology. In this chapter, with a view to filling in some of these gaps, I note two connected shortcomings in Hacking’s analysis of looping effects. First, his framework lacks an empirically and philosophically plausible account of the self to substantiate the complex causal structure of looping effects. Second, he fails to engage with the complexity of mental disorder in the consideration of this phenomenon in the realm of psychopathology. Once the 228 Tekin complexity of selfhood and the complexity of the encounter with mental disorders are considered, it becomes clear that the causal trajectory of looping effects is more complex than hitherto envisioned. Hacking uses the phenomenon of looping effects to articulate a dynamic nominalism, according to which the scientific classifications of human phenomena interact with those phenomena, leading to mutual changes. In other words, there is an interactive causal trajectory between scientific classifications and the subjects classified. Instead of describing what looping effects are, in reference to the features of the subject classified and the features of scientific classifications, Hacking uses examples to illustrate them. He includes not only mental disorders but also other human phenomena that are subject to scientific research, such as obesity, child abuse, and refugee status. With these examples, Hacking shows how scientific classifications may generate changes in a subject’s self-conceptions and behavior. However, a full discussion of looping effects requires both an account of the way in which scientific classifications influence the subjects and an account of how and why the subject responds to being classified in the way she does. Such scrutiny requires recognition of what the self is, of how self-concepts are formed, and of how behavioral changes are motivated . In addition, when the phenomenon of looping effects is considered in the context of psychopathology, this scrutiny requires recognizing the complexity of the ways in which mental disorder influences the subject. The encounter with mental disorder changes an individual’s self-concept and behavior, and it is not easy—if indeed possible—to discriminate the influence of diagnosis of mental disorder on self-concepts and behavior from that of the mental disorder itself. The fact that the diagnosed subject changes her self-concepts and behavior not only in response to being classified but also in response to her encounter with mental disorder reveals that the causal net of looping effects is much more complex than Hacking envisions. To the extent that he discusses the self (he seems to be using self/person/subject/soul interchangeably—see, e.g., Hacking 2004), he is informed by a simplified account of personhood that situates the subject somewhere between genetic and neurobiological dispositions and freedom of choice. Hacking neither offers an account of mental disorders nor embraces the complex ways in which they shape people’s self-concepts and behavior. Owing to his superficial treatment of the self...

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